Tag Archives: joe michael mcdonald

We interrupt your regularly scheduled post for something wonderful…

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I originally had our latest session of 5 Questions scheduled for today, but yesterday I stumbled upon a marvelous, time-sensitive story, and I really wanted to share it with the PuzzleNation audience, because it exemplifies the very best of the puzzly gaming community.

In last week’s Follow-Up Friday post, I briefly discussed Joe Michael MacDonald’s marvelous version of Qwirkle designed for colorblind players. And lo and behold, here is a Kickstarter campaign with even loftier goals.

The folks at 64 Oz. Games are in the final hours of a project called Board Games: Now Blind Accessible, wherein they produce specialty sleeves and other modifications for established board games and card games, allowing visually impaired players to play alongside their sighted pals.

Not only have they developed a touch-based game called Yoink! that is based on tactile gameplay, but a combination of Braille and clever use of QR codes has opened up games like Munchkin, King of Tokyo, and numerous roleplaying games to a previously excluded audience.

This inclusive spirit is brilliantly typical of the puzzle and game communities, since so many members — both designers and players/solvers — want nothing more than to share their love of games with the world.

And numerous board game, card game, and puzzle game companies are supporting the endeavor. Not only the folks at Cheapass Games, but also companies like Rio Grande Games, 9th Level, Living Worlds, and (hilariously, considering their reputation) Cards Against Humanity. (You can check out the full list of companies here.)

It’s an absolutely wonderful idea, and although there are only a few hours left to donate to this very worthy cause, I’m overjoyed to say that they’ve raised more than double their hoped-for campaign total!

This is Kickstarter and the puzzle and game communities at their best, and I’m glad I discovered it in time to share it with my fellow puzzlers.

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It’s Follow-Up Friday (in color!)

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Welcome to Follow-Up Friday!

For those new to PuzzleNation Blog, Follow-Up Friday is a chance for us to revisit the subjects of previous posts and update the PuzzleNation audience on how these projects are doing and what these people have been up to in the meantime.

And today, I thought I’d mention a curious and clever board game development I stumbled across recently.

One of the most popular games from our recent TableTop Day event was Qwirkle.

A wonderful tile game featuring different colors and symbols, Qwirkle follows in the strategy and pattern-matching tradition of Uno and Mexican Train dominoes.

Unfortunately, my fellow puzzlers and I quickly discovered that the colors chosen for the game are difficult for colorblind players to tell apart. And in a game where you don’t want to show other players your tiles before you play them, it becomes much harder to tell the different between red and orange tiles, which is a crucial distinction during gameplay.

Thankfully, a software developer and board game fan named Joe Michael McDonald took it upon himself to design a colorblind-friendly color palette for Qwirkle.

qwirklecolorblind

[On the left is the standard Qwirkle color options. On the right is McDonald’s colorblind-friendly variant.]

It’s a terrific example of player ingenuity solving an unforeseen problem and opening up the game to a whole new audience.

Kudos to you, sir. Here’s hoping more games offer a colorblind-friendly variant very soon.

Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! You can share your pictures with us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook, check us out on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and be sure to check out the growing library of PuzzleNation apps and games!